


a butterfly mourning springtime

by ivermectin



Series: consider: gay grimaldi siblings [1]
Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: (it's fade to black though), Bargains: Dan writing Louis's vows, Dan Humphrey Loves Blair Waldorf, Dan Humphrey's Writing, Gay Louis Grimaldi, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Infidelity, Louis Grimaldi is a shady man, Love Triangles, M/M, POV Louis Grimaldi, Repression, Sex, it's not internalised homophobia as much as it is the repression, please do not use this fic as a primer for how to behave in a healthy relationship, so much repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29711106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/pseuds/ivermectin
Summary: Louis has always been a romantic, has always wanted a love that was like the movies. And here is a sad boy with lovely eyes and beautiful writing – Louis thinks, this could be a love like the movies, here, too, just, not the sort of movie he would’ve been allowed to watch.
Relationships: Chuck Bass/Blair Waldorf (background/minor), Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf (again: background), Dan Humphrey/Louis Grimaldi
Series: consider: gay grimaldi siblings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2183517
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	a butterfly mourning springtime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lizwas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizwas/gifts).



> Liz! this fic is for you because you made the mistake of saying you'd be okay with anything I gifted you. so here. beware what you wish for, lest it come true. lmao! love you.
> 
> I was going to name this after a lyric in The Louvre by Lorde but that felt too much, lmao.

When Dan sends him to kill the story, Louis does. But he reads the story first, and that is his undoing. “ _The summer we had sex I knew it was fleeting, I knew you would not choose me. Like a butterfly mourning springtime, I would have to let you go, my darling,”_ were the very first lines.

Louis had read it, and then read it again.

_To think you exist here, with all these people, and none of them really know you,_ Louis had thought. And he’d also thought that maybe he had something in common with Dan Humphrey. And the force of that thought, the sheer magnetism of it, had gotten him in Brooklyn to deliver a message that could be delivered over the phone. Except maybe, that’s not all he wanted to do in Brooklyn.

“So you’re in love with Blair,” Louis says, once Dan has let him into the loft. It’s just the two of them, and Louis is oddly disarmed by the look in the other man’s eyes, this man he barely knows, with his beautiful writing and evident misery, who clearly pretends to be happier than he is in the hope that it helps people around him.

Dan just looks at Louis, something lost in his expression, something Louis resonates with. Louis remembers visiting the Louvre, seeing a girl as beautiful as all the art, thinking, _if I can’t love her, I can’t love any woman, she is beautiful and perfect and a dream._ He remembers thinking, _I must love her._ Louis has always been a romantic, has always wanted a love that was like the movies. And here is a sad boy with lovely eyes and beautiful writing – English may not be his first language, but Louis knows good literature when he sees it – here is a man, just another man, but Louis thinks, this could be a love like the movies, here, too, just, not the sort of movie he would’ve been allowed to watch.

“It’s alright,” he says, stepping closer to Dan. “I don’t mind, but I would like to ask you a favour, or two.”

The first is easy, shameless even. _Write Blair’s vows_ , Louis asks. It makes sense. Dan’s a writer, English is his first language, and he is overflowing with love for Blair to an extent wherein this should come easy to him. _I can forgive you looking at my future wife with your eyes like that, if you write the vows for me,_ Louis thinks. He looks at Dan and feels a stab of something in his heart. He knows, intuitively, that Dan loves Blair better than he ever will, with the same surety that he knows Blair is still in love with Chuck, and maybe always will be.

Which is why he does the second thing that he does.

“I have a second favour to ask of you,” he says to Dan. And then, he leans forward, puts a hand on Dan’s cheek, kisses him.

Louis had wanted things with her to work out so badly. For Blair to love him, for him to love Blair, for them to be what was needed of them. But leopards can’t change their spots. Blair will always be in love with another man, and Louis will never love a woman. He’s tried, and he’s tried, and it’s never been enough. He will keep on trying, still; he’s a prince, he has responsibilities, his mother is breathing down his neck about them all the time. But for now, for a few hours, in the loft with Dan Humphrey, he will allow himself to be who he really is. To love the way he has always wanted to. To take what he wants, to give freely in return.

All of them are guilty, guilty, guilty. Blair had murmured Chuck’s name when they’d had sex last; Louis had pretended not to hear. If he was honest with himself, he’d been glad that he had even been able to get her off.

“Louis….” Dan is confused, visibly so. Louis takes both of Dan’s hands gently, tenderly, kisses the inside of his wrists.

“Don’t pretend you’re a good man,” Louis says, quiet. “Don’t pretend you’re above all this. If you don’t want me, you can tell me to my face. But I’m here for you, and nobody else is.”

“I can’t do this to Blair,” Dan says, quiet.

“What do _you_ want?” Louis asked. “Other than what you want for Blair, other than wanting Blair herself. Do you really live like this? All alone, with no lover, nobody other than me aware of who truly owns your heart?”

Dan looks away, and Louis suspects that he’s ashamed.

“Daniel,” he says, carefully. “I do not say this to embarrass you. I say it because I can empathise. Do you think I don’t know what it means, to be this deeply lonely, to have no choices, to do something that hurts you personally to make other people happy?”

Dan looks at Louis now, and he looks sadder than before, which Louis would not have thought possible. But it’s like something has finally gotten through to him, because he swallows, and nods. “Okay,” he says, quiet.

When Louis kisses him, he kisses back. When Louis takes him to bed, Dan is quiet, but he reciprocates generously enough, and his touch is warm, his kisses deep, his intent clear and his focus sharp. Louis thinks Dan would make a good lover; he is steady and deliberate in all his actions. But the Dan in his bed isn’t anything more than a one-off, and they’re both aware of it. It’s all sex and no strings. And once it’s over, it’s over, but it had been good, at least.

Louis kisses Dan’s cheek before he leaves. Dan swallows noticeably, looks away. He looks conflicted, hurt, desolate. Sadder in a different way, now. Louis wonders whether he is sad for himself, or on Blair’s behalf, or maybe even sad for Louis. Maybe, in a different world, Louis would’ve stumbled into Dan at the Louvre. Maybe in that world it would’ve been acceptable, allowed, for him to act on these feelings. To be who he is with his head held high.

Not in this world, though. Not for Louis Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco. Not for the man his mother wants him to be, the man the media has constructed and broadcasted. Polished, clean-cut, palatable Louis Grimaldi. Louis Grimaldi, Monégasque prince, who will always belong to his people first and foremost and never to himself. Louis Grimaldi does not make love to boys in Brooklyn. He has responsibilities, to find a nice girl and settle down.

He gives instructions to his chauffeur quickly and methodically, does a quick detour on his way back. He needs to arrange macaroons for Blair, the ones she likes. Only the best things for Blair.

**Author's Note:**

> okay but once i write blairtrice it REALLY is over for all of us, me included


End file.
